After a first round bye, the blue and whites will be ready for a Tigers team who defeated Pat’s last year and gave the Mudgee Dragons a test at times in a loss last week.

Pat’s will still head in as favourites with a team that features dynamic playmaker Garry Reilly, the skilful  Tim Holman (who returns from the Cowra Magpies) and a wealth of new forwards, including Joe Batchelor and Brady Cheshire.

Pat’s coach Kurt Hancock has been forced to do some shuffling in the backs due to injuries. 

“We’re as ready as we can be, though we’ve got a few injury concerns already,” he said.

“Jacob Bell’s nursing a shoulder injury from our trial game against Coogee and Jake Bright’s looking at the season with his knee. 

“Nathan Lawrence picked up an ankle injury from the knockout and it’s not quite clear yet when he will be back.

“Those outside backs are a hard thing to come across these days. I still feel that we’ve got the experience to cover those positions. 

“We’ve got a fair bit of depth and the younger guys coming through.

“There’s not too much to be stressed about, though we do want to start well.”

The Tigers went down 38-20 against the Dragons last week, but showed plenty of potential.

The visitors will be buoyed by the knowledge they inflicted one of just four regular season losses on St Pat’s last season.

“Oberon always play well against us ... and they were pretty good against Mudgee last week. We’ve got to be on our game early and that’s something I’ve spoken a lot about,” Hancock said.

“They look like they’re a younger side and that usually means they’ll be jumping out of their skin and playing above themselves for the first five or six weeks. 

“We will be showing them a fair bit of respect as they defeated us last year.”

Having only the pre-season trials and knockout to get a gauge on his team, Hancock will be interested to see how his side cope with their first premier league outing of the season.

“It’s definitely a different looking team. Last year I knew after the knockout what expectations I had for guys in the team,” he said.

“It’s a different make-up now, so I’ll have to wait and see what happens.

“Our success continued in the trials and knockout and I hope that will continue. It’s going to be a different approach to how we played last year.

“We’ve still got three guys on the bench as well who were a part of that grand final side.”

It will be an earlier kick-off for St Pat’s tomorrow as premier league is set to start at 1.45pm.

ST PAT’S: 1 Tim Holman, 2 Adam Morton, 3 Mick Armstrong, 4 Dave Howard, 5 Curtis Boardman, 6 Garry Reilly, 7 Joey Coughlan, 8 Pat Boatswain, 9 Benjamin John, 10 Luke Newsome, 11 Brady Cheshire, 12 Corey Averio, 13 Joe Batchelor, 14 Cameron Neville, 15 Derryn Clayton, 16 Nick Miller, 17 Ben Thompson